Gordon School

The Gordon School is a coeducational, independent school located in East Providence, Rhode Island. Students are educated from nursery through eighth grade. It is located on a 12 acre site.

Mission statement
The Gordon School is a racially diverse nursery through eighth grade coeducational independent school in East Providence, Rhode Island. Child by child, the Gordon School community cultivates successful students by inspiring joyful learning, encouraging intellectual leadership, fostering an empathic spirit and stimulating a drive for positive societal impact.

History
The Gordon School was founded by Dr. Helen West Cooke in 1910 in her home in Providence’s East Side. It was the first coeducational independent school in Rhode Island.

The school relocated to its current campus in 1963. The 1963 campus was designed by William D. Warner, the architect that went on to create several high-profile area projects, including Providence's Waterplace Park and the iWay Bridge. The campus design includes woods, wetlands and gardens that accommodate year-round outdoor learning and allow students to grow their own food.

Since the 1990s, Gordon has worked strategically to increase the diversity of the school and to ensure that every student and family feels entitled to full membership in the community. The school became a leader in multicultural education, and from 2010 to 2015, the Teacher Residency Program at Gordon School and Roger Williams University offered a master's degree program grounded in multicultural education and teaching for social justice. The school was early in its embrace of race-based affinity groups for students, and continues to develop innovative strategies to support diversity in independent schools, most recently with an annual Institute for New Teachers of Color in Independent Schools.

In 2018, Gordon abandoned the traditional financial aid model used by independent schools, replacing it with a system they called Family Individualized Tuition. The system is a complete reimagining of the financial relationship between the school and families, making pricing more predictable over the long term and undermining the two-tiered culture of “full-pay” and “on aid” that exists in other independent schools.

Notable achievements
Since 2015, Gordon has finished in the top three in the annual statewide MathCounts competition, with four first place finishes as a team and four first place finishes for individuals. Gordon's teams have historically stood out at the competition by having a strong gender balance, and the school credits their success to a new, more inclusive approach to math introduction that began in 2012.

Karan S. Takhar won the Rhode Island heat of both the 2003 and 2005 National Geographic bee and represented the state in the national finals. In 2016, the school champion finished 3rd in the Rhode Island GeoBee competition. In 2017, the Gordon School champion lost in the final round and placed 2nd in the state competition.

The Gordon School’s competitive robotics team won the Director's Award in the Rhode Island FIRST LEGO League competition, as well as a Young Environmentalist Award from Save the Bay in early 2006. In the 2006 World Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, against 80 teams from 15 countries, they finished second in the programming category.

Students' work with the pond and stream on campus, as well as nearby Narragansett Bay, has earned the school regional attention from environmental education groups. Along with the 2006 Save the Bay award mentioned above, the school also earned the Environment Council of Rhode Island's Loraine Tisdale Environmental Education Award in 2007. Other environmental education efforts include participation in International Coastal Cleanup Day.

Since the mid-1990s, Gordon has established itself as a leader among independent schools that are strengthening their racial diversity and multicultural classroom practice. Gordon administrators have consulted with dozens of schools. Gordon faculty have also presented programs like the eighth grade "Civil Rights Trip" to Georgia and Alabama at the annual NAIS People of Color Conference, and earned the NAIS 2004 Leading Edge Program award for Equity and Justice.

Gordon's sledding hill is on the Boston Globe's list of seven "timeless" hills in Rhode Island.

Notable alumni

 * David Aldrich, artist and architect
 * John Chafee, US Senator and Rhode Island Governor
 * Jared Donaldson, professional tennis player
 * Charlie Enright, sailor
 * Mary Ann Lippitt, pilot, aviation business founder
 * Nico Muhly, musician and composer
 * Joan Nathan, American cookbook author and newspaper journalist
 * Edward L. Widmer, American historian, writer, librarian, and musician

Notable faculty

 * Ruth Tripp, music